to meet strange employees and take them home
to his wife? He glanced at Dewitt and caught a twinkle of perfect
understanding in the bright blue eyes of his chief. Burns made a sound
between a grunt and a chuckle, and turned his eyes away immediately;
but Dewitt chose to make speech upon the subject.

"You haven't spoiled our new leading woman--yet," he observed idly.

"Oh, but he has," Jean dissented. "He has got me trained so that when
he says smile, my mouth stretches itself automatically. When he says
sob, I sob. He just snaps his fingers, Mr. Dewitt, and I sit up and go
through my tricks very nicely. You ought to see how nicely I do them."

Mr. Dewitt put up a hand and pulled at his close-cropped, white
mustache that could not hide the twitching of his lips. "I have seen,"
he said drily, and leaned forward for a word with the liveried
chauffeur. "Turn up on Broadway and stop at the Victoria," he said, and
the chin of the driver dropped an inch to prove he heard.

Dewitt laid his fingers on Jean's arm to catch her attention. "Do you
see that picture on the billboard over there?" he asked, with a special
inflection in his nice, crisp voice. "Does it look familiar to you?"

Jean looked, and pinched her brows together. Just at first she did not
comprehend. There was her name in fancy letters two feet high: "JEAN,
OF THE LAZY A." It blared at the passer-by, but it did not look
familiar at all. Beneath was a high-colored poster of a girl on a
horse. The horse was standing on its hind feet, pawing the air; its
nostrils flared red; its tail swept like a willow plume behind. The
machine slowed and stopped for the traffic signal at the crossing, and
still Jean studied the poster. It certainly did not look in the least
familiar.

"Is that supposed to be me, on that plum-colored horse?" she drawled,
when they slid out slowly in the wake of a great truck.

"Why, don't you like it?" Dewitt looked at Jim Gates, who was again
grinning delightedly and surreptitiously scribbling something on the
margin of a folded paper he was carrying.

Jean turned upon him a mildly resentful glance. "No, I don't. Pard is
not purple; he's brown. And he's got the dearest white hoofs and a
white sock on his left hind foot; and he doesn't snort fire and
brimstone, either." She glanced anxiously at the jam of wagons and
automobiles and clanging street-cars. "I don't know, though," she
amended ruefully, "I think perhaps he